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Rejected versions of famous movies (that were way better than what we got)

Hopefully making everyone who’s ever been rejected in their lives feel just a little bit better, it turns out that some scrapped early pitches for famous movies were actually better than the final versions we all got to see.

Peter Jackson's Freddy Kruger movie sounds amazing

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Before he was seemingly trapped in Middle Earth forever, Peter Jackson was a renowned horror director. While you might be familiar with some of his early, gory outings such as “Dead Alive,” and “Bad Taste,” you may not know “A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Lover,” Jackson’s unused script for a sixth Freddy Krueger movie.

Apparently Jackson’s script begins with Freddy powerless and weak. In fact, he’s so pathetically un-scary that teenagers recreationally take sleeping pills in order to enter the dream world and beat the crap out of Freddy-- which is both a fun way to reintroduce the character, and a clever meta commentary on how tame the once frightening monster had become. After all, how scary could you find someone who released a song called “Do the Freddy?”

Of course, at some point in the film, Freddy would get his groove back, giving audiences the pun-filled carnage they’d come to expect. Sadly though, Jackson’s innovative take was rejected in favor of the forgettable “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.”

"Spider-Man 2" originally made way more sense

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“Spider-Man 2” is a great movie, but there are whole sections of it that make no sense whatsoever. One of the weirdest plot developments involves Peter Parker losing his spider powers for seemingly no reason, only to gain them back again at the end, also for no reason.

In the original draft by novelist Michael Chabon (who's still credited as a co-writer) this is all actually explained. In Chabon’s version, Dr. Octopus is helping Peter to reverse his powers with an implant that Peter has to later dig out in order to gain his powers back at the film’s conclusion. Also, in Chabon’s version, Doc Ock puts the moves on Mary Jane, and Harry puts a $10 million bounty on Spider-Man’s head, causing random citizens to violently turn on Spidey.

All in all, it sounds like Chabon’s script was more nuanced than the final film, which was re-written by two guys from “Smallville” that the studio hired. Because who needs a Pulitzer Prize-winning author when you can get a couple of guys from “Smallville."

"Dirty Dancing 2" began as an epic historical drama

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Playwright Peter Sagal was approached by Lawrence Bender, the producer of “Reservoir Dogs" and “Pulp Fiction," to write an original script, after Bender saw a production of one of Sagal’s plays. Sagal’s screenplay ended up being a coming of age drama set against the backdrop of the Cuban revolution.

The movie was rewritten when the producers wanted it to be more “Dirty Dancing” like-- older guy, younger girl, and presumably more characters refusing to be put in corners.

Sagal’s screenplay was eventually shelved until years later the guy who owned the rights to “Dirty Dancing” teamed up with Bender. Since writing a new script to capitalize on their ownership of the "DD" franchise would be a lot of work, they simply dusted off Sagal's script, had it rewritten to omit almost all of the political content, and released it as “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” to the benefit of no one.

"Robin Hood" was originally "Nottingham"

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Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” ended up being a fairly bland re-telling of the familiar story, the only twist being that Robin’s origin story was basically the same as Don Draper’s. It also proved that Russell Crowe is far less charismatic than a cartoon fox-- but surprisingly, “Robin Hood” initially began as a revisionist take on the legend.

Titled "Nottingham," the much buzzed about script told the story from the perspective of the Sheriff of Nottingham, as he tries to protect the townspeople from the terrorist known as Robin Hood. Ridley Scott, who came on board as director, wasn’t a fan, however, calling it “CSI: Sherwood Forest.”

The script went through several rewrites, including one insane version that included a ridiculous “Fight Club”-esque twist where it's revealed that Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham were, in fact, the same person. DUN DUN DUN. Eventually Scott just settled on telling the same story we’ve seen a million times.

"Garfield" was almost about the apocalypse

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Before the recent Garfield movies that even Bill Murray seems to hate, there was almost a completely different Garfield feature film, penned by the character’s creator Jim Davis. Conceived during the ‘80s, when Garfield was seemingly everywhere (specifically, suction-cupped to the window of every car in North America) Davis’s movie would have found Garfield dealing with an impending apocalypse-- a pretty heavy subject for a character whose primary obstacles are Mondays and not getting enough lasagna.

The movie, “Garfield’s Judgement Day,” concerned a world-ending storm that only animals (including Garfield and Odie) can sense coming. Not only was the script completed, but the dialogue (including some songs) was fully recorded. Unfortunately, no one would fund the film’s animation, probably because of its dark, depressing theme. Davis later turned the story into a Garfield book.